Intel SSD 730 (480GB) Review: Bringing Enterprise to the Consumers
by Kristian Vättö on February 27, 2014 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Storage
- SSDs
- Intel
- Intel SSD 730
The days of Intel being the dominant player in the client SSD business are long gone. A few years ago Intel shifted its focus from the client SSDs to the more profitable and hence alluring enterprise market. As a result of the move to SandForce silicon, Intel's client SSD lineup became more generic and lost the Intel vibe of the X-25M series. While Intel still did its own thorough validation to ensure the same quality as with its fully in-house designed drives, the second generation SandForce platform didn't allow much OEM customization, which is why the SSD 520 and other SandForce based Intel SSDs turned out to be very similar to the dozens of other SandForce driven SSDs in the market.
The SSD market has matured since the X-25M days and a part of the maturing process involves giving up profits. Back in 2007-2008 the SSD market (both client and enterprise) was a niche with low volume and high profits, so it made sense for Intel to invest in custom client-oriented silicon. There wasn't much competition and given Intel's resources and know-how, they were able to build a drive that was significantly better than the other offerings.
The high profits, however, attracted many other manufacturers as well and in the next few years Intel faced a situation it didn't like: profit margins were going down, yet bigger and bigger investments had to be made in order to stay competitive in the client market. OCZ in particular was heavily undercutting Intel's pricing and big companies with technological and scale advantage like Intel tend not to like the bargain game because at the end of the day it's not as profitable for them. The enterprise market is a bit different in this regard because price is not usually the commanding factor; instead the focus is on reliability, features and performance, which made it an easy choice for Intel to concentrate its resources on covering that market instead.
For the majority of consumers this change in focus was negligible since the likes of Micron and Samsung had started paying attention to the retail consumer SSD market and Intel was no longer the only good option available. However, enthusiasts were left yearning for an Intel SATA 6Gbps design as many had built brand loyalty for Intel with the X-25M. In late 2012 the wishes materialized but to their disappointment only in the form of an enterprise SSD: the DC S3700. This verified that enterprise was Intel's first priority but given that it was a SATA 6Gbps rather than a PCIe design, it left hope for a more client-orientated in-house Intel solution. Fast-forward to today and that solution is now here. Please meet the SSD 730, Intel's new client flagship.
Adopting the platform from the DC S3500/S3700, the SSD 730 is Intel's first fully in-house designed client drive since the SSD 320. The SSD 730 is not just a rebranded enterprise drive, though, as both the controller and NAND interface are running at higher frequencies for increased peak performance. While the branding suggests that this is an enterprise drive like the SSD 710, Intel is marketing the SSD 730 directly to consumers and the DC S3xxx along with the 900 series remain as Intel's enterprise lineups. And in a nod to enthusiasts, the SSD 730 adopts the Skulltrail logo to further emphasize that we are dealing with some serious hardware here.
Capacity | 240GB | 480GB |
Controller | Intel 3rd Generation (SATA 6Gbps) | |
NAND | Intel 20nm MLC | |
Sequential Read | 550MB/s | 550MB/s |
Sequential Write | 270MB/s | 470MB/s |
4K Random Read | 86K IOPS | 89K IOPS |
4K Random Write | 56K IOPS | 74K IO |
Power (idle/load) | 1.5W / 3.8W | 1.5W / 5.5W |
Endurance | 50GB/day (91TB total) | 70GB/day (128TB total) |
Warranty | Five years | |
Availability | Pre-orders February 27th - Shipping March 18th |
Intel is serious about the SSD 730 being an enterprise-class drive for the client market as even the NAND is pulled from the same batch as Intel's MLC-HET NAND used in the S3700 and the endurance rating is based on JEDEC's enterprise workload. JEDEC's SSD spec, however, requires that client SSDs must have a data retention time of one year minimum whereas enterprise drives must be rated at only three months, which gives the S3500/S3700 a higher endurance. MLC-HET also trades performance for endurance by using lower programming voltages, resulting in less stress on the silicon oxide.
Intel SSD 730 | Intel SSD 530 | Intel SSD DC S3500 | Intel SSD DC S3700 | |
Capacities (GB) | 240, 480 | 80, 120, 180, 240, 360, 480 | 80, 120, 160, 240, 300, 400, 480, 600, 800 | 100, 200, 400, 800 |
NAND | 20nm MLC | 20nm MLC | 20nm MLC | 25nm MLC-HET |
Max Sequential Performance (Reads/Writes) | 550 / 470 MBps | 540 / 490 MBps | 500 / 450 MBps | 500 / 460 MBps |
Max Random Performance (Reads/Writes) | 89K / 75K IOPS | 48K / 80K IOPS | 75K / 11.5K IOPS | 76K / 36K IOPS |
Endurance (TBW) |
91TB (240GB) 128TB (480GB) |
36.5TB |
140TB (200GB) 275TB (480GB) |
3.65PB (200GB) 7.3PB (400GB) |
Encryption | - | AES-256 | AES-256 | AES-256 |
Power-loss Protection | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
Continuing with the enterprise features, there is full power-loss protection similar to what's in the S3500/S3700. I'm surprised that we've seen so few client SSDs with power-loss protection. Given the recent studies of power-loss bricking SSDs, power-loss protection should make a good feature at least in the high-end SSDs.
Test System
CPU |
Intel Core i5-2500K running at 3.3GHz (Turbo and EIST enabled) |
Motherboard | AsRock Z68 Pro3 |
Chipset | Intel Z68 |
Chipset Drivers | Intel 9.1.1.1015 + Intel RST 10.2 |
Memory | G.Skill RipjawsX DDR3-1600 4 x 8GB (9-9-9-24) |
Video Card |
Palit GeForce GTX 770 JetStream 2GB GDDR5 (1150MHz core clock; 3505MHz GDDR5 effective) |
Video Drivers | NVIDIA GeForce 332.21 WHQL |
Desktop Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
OS | Windows 7 x64 |
Thanks to G.Skill for the RipjawsX 32GB DDR3 DRAM kit
96 Comments
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Namey - Friday, February 28, 2014 - link
AgreededDeath666Angel - Friday, February 28, 2014 - link
Hm, so the Oxford Dictionary recognized word "monies" sounds uneducated to you? And it seems that documentated and adaptated are perfectly fine and acceptable words as well. Just because you don't use them in every day language or they sound weird does not mean they are not correct. There are many different types of spoken and written English language. And making fun of one of the (correct) ways to write that language does seem, what's the word, uneducated. :PMipmap - Thursday, February 27, 2014 - link
"build a drive significantly that was better than the other offerings."build a drive that was significantly better than the other offerings.
JarredWalton - Thursday, February 27, 2014 - link
Man, I seriously flubbed that sentence/paragraph on the editing pass. I think I tried to copy/paste to rearrange words but somehow missed. LOLGuspaz - Thursday, February 27, 2014 - link
The endurance figures must be wrong. They're quoting that the drive supports only 267 cycles before it dies (128TB / 480GB = ~267), which is absurdly low. This is supposed to be high endurance MLC, but even Samsung's TLC has multiple times higher endurance than that...KAlmquist - Thursday, February 27, 2014 - link
Perhaps Intel is assuming 3000 cycles and a worst case write amplification of 12. (If you aren't familiar with write amplification, see Anand's early SSD articles on this site.)Guspaz - Thursday, February 27, 2014 - link
Intel previously claimed a write amplification of 1.1 way back in the G1 days. Are you saying that this drive has an order of magnitude worse write amplification than their oldest drives?futrtrubl - Friday, February 28, 2014 - link
Remember that they are using enterprise metrics and not client metrics on this. It could be the you can be more flexible on the WA you can assume on client drives.Guspaz - Friday, February 28, 2014 - link
Perhaps, but don't you think that the order of magnitude reduction in claimed write endurance deserves a call out in the article, if only to explain why that's the case?KAlmquist - Friday, February 28, 2014 - link
The 1.1 write amplification was presumably typical rather than worst case. I wouldn't expect the write amplification to be that much different from the G1. The large block and page sizes probably make write amplification a bit worse, but the algorithms may have improved a bit.I agree with your comment below that it would have been nice if the reviewer had queried Intel about the endurance spec, rather than leaving us to speculate.